The reparations bill promoted by Congressman Bowman won't do any justice for Blacks

Democratic New York Congressman, Jamaal Bowman, has recently co-sponsored two reparations bills, H.R. 40 and H.R. 414.

Congressman Bowman argued that the United States has “a moral and legal obligation to provide reparations for the enslavement of Africans and its lasting harm on the lives of millions of black people in the United States.” While these sound morally and emotionally appealing, the hard truth is that none of these bills co-sponsored will fix the core issue that holds the Black community back.

Whereas the H.R. 40 bill, titled the "Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act," was introduced in January 2023. It calls for the establishment of a 15-member commission to study the history of slavery and its impact on African Americans, and to develop proposals for reparations; the H.R. 414, titled “The Henry Aaron Closing the Racial Wealth Gap Act of 2023” proposes a $14 trillion investment in various initiatives that aim to address racial wealth gaps in areas like education, healthcare, and housing. The truth is that, neither of these two proposed laws, if enacted, will do justice to the Black community for two reasons.

First, slavery in the United States has been a very complex system that was not merely limited to the enslavement of Blacks by Whites. Black people were also slaveowners. As a matter of fact, the first legal slaveowner in the United States was Anthony Johnson, a wealthy Angolan planter who the Courts granted legal ownership of John Casor to perpetual indenture servitude. Furthermore, most of the ancestors of White Americans who currently live in the United States arrived in America after the abolition of slavery, when the U.S. had one of the most liberal immigration policies of the time. If these two legislations pass, then which Black families will pay for reparations? And how is it fair to make families that never owned slaves, pay for reparations?

Second, political power is used to fix a problem that can’t be fixed by politics. The fundamental point of reparations is simply a matter of transfer of wealth but transferring wealth from one racial group to another won’t simply close the wealth gap if the racial group receiving the funds does not have the technical knowledge to manage the funds properly to improve its socioeconomic condition and reduce that wealth gap. The real issue here is for the Black community to first change its mindset. Rather than seeking social and economic changes through political means, they should seek these changes by economic and financial means the way the Jews have always done wherever they experienced socioeconomic injustices.

The real reparations Blacks could get is for them to create a national holding company or fund whereby each Black person would contribute at least $20. The Black population in America is roughly 13%, so about 43 million people. If each Black person pitches, at the very least, $20 into the fund/company, the fund would then have $860 million in cash reserves, and each Black person who contributed to the fund would be a shareholder, therefore, entitled to receive dividend payments quarterly or semi-annually in perpetuity (so long as the national company continues to operate). Thus, the money in this hypothetical Black-owned national holding company could use these $860 million to invest in productive assets that would generate positive cash-flow for the company, and by extension to its shareholders. After a few years of consistent positive cash-flow, this hypothetical Black-owned national holding company could get listed on the New York Stock Exchange, and raise more capital from the public while making sure that majority ownership of the company remains Black. This is how a minority group acquires financial power and exerts influence in society. But to expect that these two pieces of legislation would do justice to Blacks is literally lying to ourselves while making Bowman more powerful than he already is.